JonasE

Hello! I have a strange recording problem with my E11. It seems to read any disk just fine, better than others. Recordning on new (unused) discs seems to work fine. Used discs can fail. A lot of dropouts. Sometimes other players cannot play the track at all. I tried recording five 10 second tracks in a row, leaving recording mode between each. Three of them could be played on another player, two could not. Took it apart for a look. Visually all looks ok. The magnetic head rests on the disc during record. And it is clean. Also measured the voltage related to the laser diode in test mode, and that seemed ok. Also tried raising the laser power somewhat and it seemed to have effect but the next recording (after lowering again) was OK too. Any ideas welcome! Best regards, Jonas

Ok, then that should not be it... The thing I glued back is the laser pickup. Probably i got this a small amount off or maybe some glue got in the wrong place. Tried to pry it apart again to check but that darn glue really works... Or maybe something else is broken. I don't have its history. How come the pickup was broken loose in the first place...? Oh well, I will keep it for parts. Thanks for answering! By the way, did you test the software, kgallen?

...and if I find a new laser for it, is there a chance to make it work with common tools like oscilloscope and stuff, or do I need special laser tools and that special disc?

Ok, I got this cheap together with a lot of discs and a portable. And a car player. When I started it there was a rattling noise. That can't be good... Opened it up and the lens could not get back to the home position, it was the motor/gear that rattled. A few careful pokes and I could get the stuck disc out by turning some sprockets manually. Starting it now still made the lens gears rattle, so I took it apart some more. Had to lift the PCB from the back of it and there.... Some thingy was loose. It was supposed to be glued to the case of the laser module with two red drops of glue. Not too much too loose... With tweezers and my nice stereo microscope i simply glued the old glue together. I think I got it as good as it could but not that easy to say. I'm not sure what it actually was I glued back... =D And the rattling was because the thing I glued back got stuck between the laser module module and chassis, so it could not get to its home position. Carefully put everything back together again, and now there was no more rattling. It just said 'NO DISC'. I gave it one, it pulled it in but it did not spin it up. The disc just moved a little a few times when it tried to read it. I could see the lens moving up and down trying to focus. Carefully pulled it apart again making sure I didn't miss any connections. Tested the spindle motor, it worked fine. Put it back together again. No change. THEN I downloaded the manual. And the first thing it says when it comes to the laser is that it is very sensitive to static electricity. And even if I have an ESD mat on my desk I was not grounded. And I did not solder that bridge on the laser cable. I didn't know because cool guys don't need to read manuals. Did I toast the laser? Or was I unsuccessful when gluing that thing? Or both? Best regards, Jonas

You should be able to use this to clone it all... Let me know if it does not work. git clone https://JonasElofsson@bitbucket.org/JonasElofsson/md_editor.git (You can also look at the code by just clicking the link above, it seems) Never shared using git so I am not sure this works. But it should be an open repository. Just open it in the free version of Visual Studio. I use 2018, I think. Or, if you just want to test it: http://jonase.se/MD_Application.exe Best regards, Jonas

...and when it comes to cables... I found a bought female-female 9-pin nullmodem cable, and that just worked ( 2<->3, 3<->2, 5<->5 at least). Not sure if rts/cts and the others need connecting at the PC end, but I dont think so. I use a Deltaco UC-232C9.

Most USB-RS232 adapters should work. I have run into problems here at work when communicating with older robot controllers using RS232 and some USB-RS232 converters. After some investigation they seem to add a linefeed after carriage return or the other way around, and that makes protocols like this crash... Driver problem!

Yes. I have not checked anything in yet. I really should do that... I will post a Git link, probably late tonight. Best regards, Jonas

Small update... As you can see I am not a graphics person. But it works so far. The deck can be controlled by the buttons top right and you can also play a track using the number button in the list. Buttons for writing updated track name, delete track, move track etc will be added shortly. :-)

Worked a bit on this yesterday evening and I now am through the specification. Removed some bugs, optimized a bit... The code is still crappy and probably a few bugs are still lurking around, but now it works good enough to start making the real application. I will try to resolve annoying bugs along the way. :-)

Haha, no problem whatsoever. =) I hope I will get my hands on an E12 too, soon. :-)

Ah, I see... So you would like a sw that first performs the recording (you can do this yourself manually, of course, but using SW is cool) and then transfer the disc and track names. Should be possible. The problem is I don't have two machines to test with, but with some luck we can make it work anyway without too many problems. We will see when I get that far. :-)

Or, of course, read the names from one disc and write them to another on the same machine. :-)

Ah, you mean.... Attach two E12's and make it copy the track names from E12-1 to E12-2? Yes, why not? :-)

=D Bought one of these: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Coax-Coaxial-to-Optical-2-Way-Toslink-SPDIF-Digital-Audio-Converter-Adapter/173764038542?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2060353.m2749.l2649 Looks a bit small but the goal is to have it remove the copy protection while keeping the look. Might be hard to find a generic FPGA board that fits in there... In either case I should be able to use the PCB for easy connecting to an FPGA.